Sport mobility in a changing Europe: a global aspect

Abstract

Modern sport is bound up in a global network of interdependency. Sport involvement in a changing Europe is an integral part of such a process: we can face an evident growth of the popularity of sport events and leisure clothing and intensification of a process of mutual relations of sports and mass media. Mutual relations of sport and globalization are not reflected directly, linearly and well balanced. In the emergence and diffusion of global sport, we face cultural structured processes of sophistication, rationalization and valorization of human expressiveness enhancing sport ethics associated with success and ultimate performance. The emergence of inequalities within and outside Europe produces a global sport power elite. Global sport as a mediator of global values has technological, migrational, economical, medial and ideological dimensions and implications. The sport and leisure industry can also be used to highlight how people’s consumption of cultural goods is bound to global processes. Cultural tastes in this context may not be totally controllable, but they can be heavily influenced.At this period of European history we have to remark an occurrence of sport labour migration and remind related problems of the production of indigenous sporting talent and respective exploitation of people from non-EU societies. Labour migration is an integral and established feature of the sporting scene. This movement of people changing their place or even position of their place of residence involves athletes, but also included coaches, officials, administrators and sport scientists. This accelerating phenomenon reflects a movement of sport people both within and between nations and continents. In the sociological centre of attention are in this context mostly questions tracing the patterns in sport migration, how and why these patterns occur, and what meaning and significance this migration has for those involved – either as “hosts” or “migrants”. We can postulate questions about attractiveness of given component sports for migrants, what professional athletes mostly experience along their journeys, what is the impact on host and donor countries. For most sport migrants their status and market value is derived from the ethos of hard work, differential rewards and win-at-all-costs approach.